The wintertime can have a harsh effect on homes as well as businesses. Cold weather can wreak havoc on even the most well-maintained commercial property. While physical calamities like snow, ice, and wind are beyond your control, the health, comfort, and safety of employees and guests can be strongly influenced by sound cleaning practices.
Going the extra mile to professionally clean and maintain your office spaces and common areas will go a long way toward stopping the spread of cold and flu germs. This reduces the number of lost sick days which can interfere with the operation of your business.
With that in mind, we put together the following guide to help you provide employees and guests with the utmost level of cleanliness during the winter months.
Exterior Maintenance & Safety
In the winter months, snow and ice can prove hazardous to any commercial property or retail space. Even during a minor winter storm, it is important to pay close attention to the outside of your property. The goal is to ensure that all sidewalks, walking paths, and parking lot areas are properly cleared of snow. You should also make sure that salt is used to melt ice and add traction to help protect people from slipping and falling.
You also need to be mindful that melted snow and salt find their way into the interior of your building. Placing secure, long floor mats at all entrances and exits gives snow and residual salt a place to be deposited, rather than it tracking onto your floor. Not only will this go a long way toward preventing slips and falls, but it will also help maintain the appearance and finish of your commercial floors. Then also make it a point to clean and/or replace these mats frequently to keep them from being inundated.
Cleaning & Maintaining Commercial Flooring In Winter
In the winter months, foot traffic has a knack for tracking in a lot of dirt including salt, slush, and mud. While long, high-quality floor mats strategically positioned in your entryways will help, they are not 100% perfect. Especially during major weather events when the absorbency rate of the floor mat’s pile simply cannot keep up with the water and debris being brought in.
That’s why it’s important to redouble your efforts when it comes to providing your commercial floors with a professional level of cleanliness. Keep an eye out for the buildup of salt that can still be tracked through the building. As undissolved salt can scratch the finish in your floors and even damage the carpeting.
Frequent, if not daily vacuuming will also go a long way toward picking up dirt and grime that makes it onto your carpets. This keeps these aggregate materials from working their way down into the pile layers of your carpet, which will go a long way toward not just keeping your commercial carpets looking clean, but also maximizing their overall lifespan.
It’s also a good idea to keep a mop handy, especially near primary doors and in food service areas like the employee cafeteria or breakroom. That way you can swoop should you see a lot of water build-up from melted snow. All this additional residue adds up over time, which will wear down the finish of just about any floor.
For larger commercial floors a special auto-mopper machine will not only clean the floor but also remove mild imperfections to help avoid collecting further dirt build-up. You can also have them apply additional floor finish if you wish to restore and protect the shiny finish on your commercial floors.
Maintaining A Healthy Interior Environment
It’s no wonder why so many people think of the winter months as “Cold and Flu Season.” This is the time of year when poor interior air circulation and the high indoor density of people can drive bacteria counts up as much as 31% during the workday.
Of course, this pathogenic presence extends across all surfaces in your building. Bathrooms are even worse, with 75 percent of washroom tap handles having some form of germs that can be spread throughout the building. This can lead to a lot of cumulative sick days. It just takes one person to spread germs through your entire company.
Though things like providing people hand sanitizer, tissues, and waste bins throughout the office for the convenience of visitors and staff can help reduce the microbial transfer in the building during the winter months. In sensitive areas where a lot of people congregate, you might want to also provide free disposable face masks for anyone who wants to use them.
Maintaining Healthy Indoor Air Quality
Awareness about the importance of indoor air quality continues to grow. This is especially concerning in the winter months when even things like the salt being tracked through your building can add to the dust buildup in your office. Natural dust accumulation and dust circulation through the closed heating system ductwork can cause significant respiratory irritation. Especially for people with pre-existing respiratory health problems.
A growing body of research has shown that indoor environments can contain up to five times more pollutants during the winter months. This is often related to the same air is circulating through the building day after day. To help address this, you should consider having your HVAC system cleaned to reduce the germs in the office. Strategically placement of air purifiers with HEPA filters will also help trap airborne contaminants.
The Benefits of Professional Cleaning
There’s no doubt about it, maintaining a professionally clean commercial property is a daunting, yet important task. That’s why a lot of commercial property owners and building managers turn to professional cleaning companies like Building Services to handle all their cleaning needs.
We have a large staff of highly trained and experienced cleaning technicians with access to state-of-the-art cleaning products as well as the equipment to use them to maximum efficiency. Our presence lets you put your focus where it needs to be on handling the day-to-day operations of your business, while we take care of the nitty, gritty details needed to keep every square inch of your building professionally clean.
